Tag Archives: Faith Crisis
Hope for the Faithless and the Doubtful
Notes from Epiphanies, 5-9-12
We worked in small groups to talk about faith, doubt, and how we integrate these in our Christian communities.
Question 1: When you think about faith, what does it look like? Is it a steady flow of understanding/feeling? Or is it an ever-changing and evolving process?
Describe faith. Is it Belief? Knowledge?
Dictionary Definition of Belief: “Mental acceptance of a proposition, statement, or fact, as true, on the ground of authority or evidence; assent of the mind to a statement, or to the truth of a fact beyond observation, on the testimony of another, or to a fact or truth on the evidence of consciousness; the mental condition involved in this assent.”
Is it more than that?
Lauren Winner, in her book Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis says this: “Faith…meant more than intellectual assent to a set of doctrines. It was a commitment of the whole self, a hope and trust that, if genuine, ought to be the foundation of an entire way of life and vision of the world.”
“On any given morning, I might not be able to list for you the facts I know about God. But I can tell you what I wish to commit myself to, what I want for the foundation of my life, how I want to see.”
Question 2: What do we do when we are personally confronted with unbelief?
Lord, I believe; help me with my unbelief!
Read this article and think about how faith and doubt are interwoven in our lives:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/05/my-faith-returning-to-church-despite-my-doubts/
Perhaps faith is more like a promise (a quote, also from Still): “What you promise when you are confirmed is not that you will believe this forever. What you promise when you are confirmed is that that is the story you will wrestle with forever.”
In small groups, we discussed a time in our own life when doubts overcame faith (much like the story above, we all had moments of severe doubt). We concluded that our doubts are as much a part of our faith journeys as our moments of strength and unwavering dedication.
Question 3: If, as we have seen and read and heard, doubt is simply a part of the faith journey, how can we help those in our midst who are “in the middle of things”?
Lauren Winner Calls this our “Mid-Faith Crisis” as Christians – she means there is a point at which we are no longer giddy about our new faith and eager to learn more. But neither are we at a point of peace and wisdom.
“The enthusiasms of my conversion have worn off. For whole stretches since the dream, since the baptism, my belief has faltered, my sense of God’s closeness has grown strained, my efforts at living in accord with what I take to be the call of the gospel have come undone. And yet in those same moments of strained belief, of not knowing where or if God is, it has also seemed that the Christian story keeps explaining who and where I am, better than any other story I know. On the days when I think I have a fighting chance at redemption, at change, I understand it to be these words and these rituals and these people who will change me. Some days I am not sure if my faith is riddled with doubt or whether, graciously, my doubt is riddled with faith. And yet I continue to live in a world the way a religious person lives in the world; I keep living in a world that I know to be enchanted, and not left alone. I doubt; I am uncertain; I am restless, prone to wander. And yet glimmers of holy keep interrupting my gaze.”
Questions to ponder:
- What brought you to mid-faith? Was it a crisis? Was it multiple crises? Was it just a “whole life of straight-forward churchgoing” or a life of wandering?
- What has church done to help you through the middle?
- How can you help others in the middle?
Perhaps the simple answer is that by realizing we all have doubts in the midst of faith and we also have faith in the midst of doubt, we move closer to understanding and supporting our fellow humanity in their wrestle with the Divine and what it means to be faithful, even when it seems impossible. We then know we have to take the time to understand that faith has steps, and one cannot move from step to step without moments of deep turmoil and struggle. [Nerd check: A good (yet a bit tedious) book on this is James Fowler’s Stages of Faith, which incorporates both psychology and theology to discuss the “stages” we go through in our faith].
Many thinkers before us have helped us better understand the intricacies of faith and doubt and how they both nurture and deliver us. God can and does meet and love all of us whether we are new, eager Christians, in the middle of a Mid-Faith Crisis, or we have moved to a deeper, more profound faith – and that is a promise worth celebrating!
I hope we all can avoid the pitfalls of describing the doubtful as weak or faithless and instead celebrate their struggle to understand and walk alongside them as we seek to understand the nature of God and how we should live as Jesus did – together.
Tags: Doubt, Faith Crisis, Personal Growth
Category: Faith & Doubt, Faith Crisis, Personal Growth, Theology
On Faith, Doubt, and Ministry
“Maybe this is a way of inhabiting faith that is, indeed, faithful; that is generative. Maybe God has given some people belief like a pier, to stand on (and God has given those people’s steadiness to the church, to me, as a reminder, as an aid), and maybe God has given other something else: maybe God has given to some this humming sense that we know nothing, this belief and disbelief a hundred times an hour, this training in nimbleness (and maybe that is a gift to the church, too).” – Lauren F. Winner, Still
“On subjects of which we know nothing, or should I say Beings…we both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an Hour, which keeps Believing nimble.” –Emily Dickinson
I have recently been reflecting on my particular brand of faith. This is not some treatise on denominational or theological boundaries, but rather, a reflection on who I am becoming each day I attempt to walk this journey with Christ.
Some days I wonder if I’m cut out for Christianity, much less clergy. But then I realize yet again that we are all works in progress. People of the cloth are nothing more than continuously forgiven sinners called to serve others. We are generally given little status in the public arena (except of course where it benefits those in power – when it ceases to be a calling and can stray into arrogance – see http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/7234/9/). But we are to be considered in church to be the teachers, the leaders, the bridge between the faithful and God. That is more than a high calling – that is a scary feat.
Most often, when I “wear my minister hat,” I feel under-qualified. That is to say, Yes: I finished 3 years of seminary and finished them well. Yes, I passed an ordination council and was ordained by my local congregation. Yes, I have debated the intricacies of the Trinity, Atonement, Ethics, Hebrew, Greek, Old & New Testament. And yet – once the robe is on or the crowd suddenly realizes I have a title, I feel like a small child wearing Mom’s dress, with shoes too big to fill.
But these lingering doubts about my own abilities have never outweighed the drive in my soul to bear witness to the goodness Christ has for others. Even when I am ready to toss the collar and hide on the back pew (if I come to the church at all), I feel lost when I am not helping others find their way in this maze of faith. My own doubt drives me to seek to find more in my faith. It does not serve to destroy anything – on the contrary, it is my doubt (my fears, my insecurities, my humility) that is my salvation.
1 Corinthians 2:1-7, 11
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory…For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God.
I figure I’ll never be that “pier to stand on” Lauren Winner describes in the quote above. But the wax and wane of my belief is what pushes my boundaries, reminds me of who I am called to be, and forces me into a better place where I can more faithfully serve God’s people with me entire being – doubts and all.
